


Doomsday Devices

by faithinthepoor



Series: Once Upon a Time [35]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-01-27
Packaged: 2018-01-10 05:47:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1155836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithinthepoor/pseuds/faithinthepoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during And Straight on ‘Til Morning (which means I have finally completed season two}.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doomsday Devices

**Author's Note:**

> In my series this follows my [Fairytale Drabbles](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618763), [Mirror Mirror](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618771), [This Provincial Life](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618775), [Viviane or Nimue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618809), [Dreams and Wishes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618851), [All the Better To….](http://archiveofourown.org/works/619484), [Magic Keys](http://archiveofourown.org/works/619497), [Curiouser and Curiouser](http://archiveofourown.org/works/619514), [Snow Blind](http://archiveofourown.org/works/620280), [Spinning Straw](http://archiveofourown.org/works/620288), [Wooden Hearts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/621128), [Poisoned](http://archiveofourown.org/works/622526), [True Love and Other Curses](http://archiveofourown.org/works/625038), [Spellbound](http://archiveofourown.org/works/628806), [Over the Rainbow](http://archiveofourown.org/works/630076), [Facades](http://archiveofourown.org/works/632227), [Lost Girls](http://archiveofourown.org/works/636939), [Monstrosities](http://archiveofourown.org/works/640162), [Love and Lies](http://archiveofourown.org/works/652912), [Something Wicked this Way Comes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/665458), [Dreamscapes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/672345), [Homecomings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/676052), [Test Match](http://archiveofourown.org/works/682287), [Wishful Thinking](http://archiveofourown.org/works/697330), [Absent Friends](http://archiveofourown.org/works/771482), [Small Mercies](http://archiveofourown.org/works/773663), [State of Mind](http://archiveofourown.org/works/778498), [Good Intentions](http://archiveofourown.org/works/802589), [The Sins of Mothers](http://archiveofourown.org/works/820893), [Affairs of the Heart](http://archiveofourown.org/works/855926), [Power Plays](http://archiveofourown.org/works/942825), [Future Plans](http://archiveofourown.org/works/969035), [Crying Wolf](http://archiveofourown.org/works/982369) and [The Eye of the Storm](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1004056)

There are days when she wants her old life back. It seems ridiculous but it’s true. On the surface this life is better but that life was so much easier. It turns out that there are definite advantages to not having anyone important in your life. A life alone is less complicated, a whole lot less painful, and, as it turns out, infinitely more preferable. 

She can’t go back, even if she wanted to, the old adage that you can’t go home again has never been truer. Emma doesn’t have a home. Storybrooke might be the closest that she has come but it isn’t her home; it’s not even real. What Storybrooke is, is the place where everything went wrong. Before she found her family, before she found a life, she knew how to look after herself but that is gone now. She can no longer just look out for herself and because of that she is ruined. She saved this town and in return Storybrooke destroyed her.

Her body is weak but she feels strangely energized as she allows herself to be pulled up from the ground. Her legs wobble and yet she feels fifty foot tall and bulletproof. She knows where that energy comes from. It comes from Regina, from combining their powers in order to stop the destruction of a town that shouldn’t even exist. The sensation is amazing, it's the best fucking trip ever, but she doesn’t want it. She doesn’t want any part of Regina.

She is angry beyond words at Regina and the brunette’s self-sacrificing behaviour. On one level Emma knows that what Regina did was a noble act, it was no different to what Emma had done when she went to face that dragon, but she resents Regina for it. It may not be right, it may be fair, but it’s certainly true. 

She’s not jealous. Her role as the saviour is not something that she is possessive about. She has never wanted to be these people’s white knight and she would gladly hand the reigns over to someone else. Anyone else. Well, almost anyone else. Anyone but Regina. It’s not that she would begrudge Regina the chance to be a hero. Emma would not want to stand in the way of something that could change how people see Regina, or how Regina sees herself. The problem is that Regina's chosen acts of heroism are reckless, dangerous, and ultimately doomed and are therefore completely unacceptable to Emma. 

Regina is lying in the dirt and Emma can’t help thinking that Regina is right where she should be, where she deserves to be. No one comes to Regina’s aid, no one tries to help her up and all Emma feels is a strange sense of satisfaction. Regina can get herself up because Emma won’t be helping her today or ever again. Regina threw the right to Emma’s help away when she tried to throw away her own life.

In a way Emma is almost as angry with herself as she is with Regina. Almost. She really should have known what Regina’s intentions were. Regina gave her enough hints. She actually told Emma that if necessary she would sacrifice herself to save her and Henry, Emma was just foolish enough to believe that she had talked her out of it. There should have been sufficient evidence from Regina's past behaviour to know that she isn’t swayed easily and even if Emma had somehow managed to miss that, Regina’s behaviour in the car on the way to the mine should have told Emma all that she needed to know. 

Regina had not made a single quip about the state of Emma’s car or her driving skills during the trip and that alone should have sent up a red flag. Couple that with the fact that for the entire drive Regina had laced her fingers with the ones that Emma had over the gearstick and Regina had essentially signed her suicide note. 

Emma had known what was happening. Contrary to what people think she is neither blind nor stupid. She knew what Regina was planning to do, she just didn’t want to admit it to herself. Not even when Regina grabbed her hand more tightly as the car came to a halt at their destination. Emma squeezed back as best she could given the awkward position of her hand and she had leaned into Regina’s touch when the brunette's other hand came up to cup her cheek. She had then used her own spare hand to grab the back of Regina’s neck and crash their lips together in a violent kiss. 

The kiss was everything. They were drowning in that kiss, drowning in that moment, so that they didn’t drown under the weight of the task ahead of them. When the kiss ended Emma shut down, she wanted no part in what was to come. She began and ended with that kiss. It had seemed the sensible thing to do but in reality it had meant that she stood there, essentially mute, while Regina decided to throw her body on a land mine. 

She couldn’t appreciate the act for the heroic gesture that is was. All she could see was the Regina was trying to sacrifice herself yet again. She’s so sick of Regina trying to do that all the fucking time. Every time there is an obstacle - a wraith, a mother, a bomb - Regina’s automatic solution is lay down her life. Emma can’t handle that any more. She can’t live with the thought that one of these days she is not going to be there to save Regina from herself. 

If she knew that Regina would have gone out in a giant ball of flames Regina’s decision might have made a little more sense. A wave of violence and destruction would have at least seemed fitting, a more appropriate end for someone so vibrant and so powerful. Regina’s soft acceptance of death was so much harder for Emma to stomach. She simply wasn’t able to stand by while Regina quietly waited for her end.

She didn’t want to watch Regina die. She wanted to punch Regina in the face and tell her she was an idiot but you don’t get to do that to person who is trying to save your son’s life. Emma couldn’t stay and so she did the only thing she could, the only thing she was ever any good at, she ran. 

She hates herself for that. Hates that she left Regina there to die. Hates that she didn’t reach out and wipe away Regina’s tears. She hates that she didn’t tell Regina that she was wrong, that not everyone sees her as the Evil Queen, that for Emma she only ever has been, and only ever will be, Regina.

Maybe that’s part of the problem. Perhaps if she could look at Regina and see a monster who needs to atone for their sins it would be easier to understand Regina’s actions. Emma doesn’t see that though. All she sees when she looks at Regina is the woman that she loves, a woman who is all too eager to throw that love away.

Emma is no better. She left Regina alone in those tunnels. What does that say about her? About her ability to love? Regina is willing to die because she trusts that Emma will be able to give Henry what he needs but that trust is misplaced. Reliable people don’t desert someone in need and they don’t leave people behind. Emma was given a cruel reminder of this when she showed up at Granny’s without Regina. It felt as though everyone in that diner was determined to show her that they are a better person than her. 

Henry, the boy who had called Regina evil and said she wasn’t his mother, insisted that Regina was family and that they couldn’t leave without her. Emma’s parents, who rank Regina as a mortal enemy, rallied troops to rescue their nemesis. The townsfolk, who often cry out for Regina’s blood or her head on a platter, fell into line behind their leaders without complaint. Not a single one of them showed any concern that this foolhardy attempt might cost all of them their lives. Emma does not know what to do with this information, she doesn’t understand these people at all.

Their actions didn’t inspire her, instead they caused her stomach to seize in pain and bile to rise in her throat. Where was this willingness to die together when she was a baby? Why did she have to be the exception to the rule? Why is she the one who had to suffer, the one who had to be alone, the one who was so damaged that she repeated the sins of her parents and sent her child away?

Their grand gesture made her resent them but it’s not the only reason she tried object to their plan. It’s true that she didn’t want Henry to be alone, she doesn’t wish that fate on anyone, but even that was only a minor factor. The reason that she didn’t want to go back, that she protested so much, was that she didn’t want to have to face Regina. She had promised Regina that she would save Henry and following her parents’ plan went completely against that. She couldn’t take back the fact that she abandoned Regina in that tunnel but she could have fulfilled Regina’s last wish. The idea of looking Regina in the eye and knowing that she had failed her was paralysing, the only thing worse was the thought of Regina dying when there might have been a chance to save her. 

Hook tried to sway her from the path her parents were leading them all down and in doing so he proved that he knows as little about her as everyone else. There might have been a time when looking out for number one at all costs appealed to her but that time has passed. That’s not who she is anymore. The person she has become is a whole lot more selfish because now she wants so much more. She wants her life, she wants her family, and she wants Regina. She wants it all and at the time she told Hook that she would be proceeding with her parents’ harebrained scheme she believed that there might have been a chance to have each of those things. She's not so sure about that anymore.

The very act that saved them all, the thing that should have guaranteed that she had a chance to have everything that she ever wanted, also took her future away. If only Hook hadn’t have stolen the bean maybe there might have been a chance. Instead she had to join her power with Regina’s and that one act of salvation changed everything.

She could have handled absolutely everything else, no matter how painful or difficult. Nothing else would have changed her mind, everything else was salvageable. Forgivable. Even the truly horrific moment when she was she was certain that all was lost, when she believed that they all would die, and she was given the opportunity to say goodbye to her parents and not Regina. 

It's not how things should have gone. It’s not who she should have been holding as the world ended but it really wasn’t the time to let her parents know that she had been letting their enemy fuck her senseless on a regular basis and had loved every minute of it. Although, there is probably never a good time for that.

She didn’t join her power with Regina because she thought they had a chance of winning, she did it because she had found a way to be connected to Regina right until the end without the unnecessary flack and fallout. If only it had been that easy. If only it had really been the end. If they’d both just died everything would have been okay. It turns out that there are things much, much worse than death.

When she joined forces with Regina more than just their magic combined. It was as though they blended. She had access to Regina’s very core – her thoughts, her feelings, her essence. Emma could feel the depth of Regina’s love for her but she could also feel her fear and anger and just how much Regina battles to keep those in check. 

She knows she has never before been loved the way Regina loves her and she knows that this will never happen again. For someone who barely has a heart Regina is able to generate a staggering amount of love. If her capacity for love could be harnessed, Regina could singlehandedly solve the world’s energy crisis. The problem is that Regina’s love is all consuming. For Regina love is the be all and the end all.

Emma has spent her life lost. Aimless. She envied people with direction, people who knew what they were searching for, but it seems that having no direction may have its advantages because an aimless search is an endless one. Regina’s life has not been aimless, it has been a search for love and that now that she has found it, there is nothing left. That fact hurts in and of itself but it hurts even more for Emma to know that as much as Regina loves her, it’s not Emma's love that ended Regina's search. Henry told Regina he loved her and in doing so he ruined everything because those words were Regina’s happy ending. They are the thing that she is willing to die to keep.

Emma doesn’t know how to change things, she doesn’t know how to keep Regina, and she is so unbelievably pissed about that. She always feared being placed in the position where she would have to choose between the rest of the family and Regina but it turns out that she shouldn’t have worried. As with everything in her life, the choice wasn’t hers to make. 

Emma didn’t choose her parents because she loves them more. She didn't even choose them because they love her more. She choose them for the saddest reason of all – because they were the only choice left. Regina is no longer safe to love. Her parents’ love isn’t better, it’s just easier.

If she had a chance to do things over she would let them all die. It would be better than this. Better than the unwelcome certainty that her future does not lie with Regina. It surprises her that her instinct is not to go back to where it all began, to refuse to come to Storybrooke or at least to leave once she’d delivered Henry safely, but that’s not what she wants. The things that have happened here, the things that have changed her, are not things that she wants to take back. The only thing she wants to take back is her glimpse into the mind of Regina Mills.

She knows that she has to end things with Regina but there is no time for that now. A backpack with a cut strap has completely changed the playing field. Henry has become the priority and she will have to delay the inevitable in order to focus on her son’s safety. She will need to be strong in order to rescue him and when that is done she will need to be even stronger in order to let Regina go.


End file.
